Tired of your aerobic workout? Feel as if it’s not burning the fat that it once did? No, it’s probably not your imagination.

But don’t think for a moment you’re condemned to a life of living with that fat. Recent research has discovered that there’s a new, improved method of fat burning. It’s called HIT cardio — High Intensity Training.

HIT may be the answer you’ve been looking for if you have stubborn body fat that just doesn’t seem to go away! The best part about this new way of looking at fat is that it can help cut the time it takes to eliminate it — and in the process build some good muscle.

So how exactly does this new “breed” of exercise work?

Traditional cardio works on the premise that your body needs a minimum sustained work out of between 20 to 30 minutes (depending on what expert you’re speaking with). And this workout is great for improving the strength of your heart — and that’s exactly why it’s called “cardio” work out.

The fact that it shed pounds in the process was wonderful. But now, we’re seeing that to shed some of those most troublesome pounds, your body may need to do something a little “different.”

To quote Emeril Lagasse, you’ve got to “kick it up a notch.” But where he was talking about spices, where talking about a workout!

So How Do You Go About Starting A HIT Session!

Before you start, be sure you’re in relatively good health. It’s best — if you haven’t been training vigorously for a while — to visit your physician. Tell him of your intentions and ask for an overall physical. Once you get that you can dive in.

Be sure you have at least a month of regular cardio training under your belt — and preferably two months. The premise of HIT is that you push your body to the maximum in a given exercise for a very short period — between 15 and 30 seconds (that’s right, seconds!). Then you don’t perform this exercise again until you have nearly recovered from that burst. Allow your heart rte to slow down to at least 50 percent of your maximum Heart Rate. This recovery period will probably take between one to three minutes. You continue this cycling through of activity for no more than 20 minutes.

You can choose to perform just about any cardio activity in this fashion, from riding a stationery bicycle to jogging. For example, if you choose to start a HIT program on a recumbent bike, you’ll probably want to warm up for about five minutes. In this first five minutes, just bicycle as you would for your cardio routine.

After the warm up period, you then pedal at a sprint — as hard as you possible can — for no more than 30 seconds. If you can’t even sprint this long, it’s fine. The idea is to get your heart really working for that short period of time. At the end of your sprint, slow back down to a normal pace (don’t stop completely and don’t make it too slow!). You’ll probably want to stay at this pace for about two minutes on average, depending on your personal level of training.

Then once you sprint again! Some people track their HIT program by time — others prefer to perform so many sets. They perform, for example, five sets of the one-minute sprint with the two-minute slower pace. This comprises about five minutes of exercise time.

Why it works?

HIT is effective because of its effects this approach has to the fat burning mechanism of your body. During High Intensity Training, you burn, for the most part, glycogen — or your stored carbohydrates. This means, in a nutshell, that you’re burning more body fat at the conclusion of your workout. And that results in your metabolism actually being “revved up” for a longer period of time.

But that’s just a portion of why this particular approach works. The short, the duration of exercise you perform, the more conducive it is keeping the muscle mass in a caloric-deprived situation, as in when you’re on a diet.

Ready to try it? Just be sure to receive the green light from your doctor — and if you’ve haven’t been exposed to cardio training recently, that you get a month or so of it under your belt, to prepare your system.